“mmmmm now this? this is an oolong i can get behind. This is dark and beautiful and there’s a woody, almost smokey but not quite flavour going on here. Yep, this is not your every day...”
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“I’ve had this one for a little while now ran out of it bought more and now that’s going to be a repeated cycle over and over with a bigger amount each time most likely, it’s...”
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From Butiki Teas

Our aged oolong is sourced from the Dong Ding tea growing region of Nantou County in Taiwan and was harvested in the spring of 2003. The varietal is Si Ji Chuan also known as Four Season. Our aged oolong was crafted by blend master Chen Pei Wen and is re-roasted every 2-3 years to minimize moisture content. 2003 Reserve Four Season Oolong is a rich full-bodied silky tea. The charcoal-colored leaves of this smooth oolong produce notes of honey suckle, bark, and grass and has a natural sweetness with no astringency present. This tea is also low in caffeine.

55 Tasting Notes

I prepared this gongfu style. Two teaspoons of leaf in a four-ounce gaiwan, with boiling water. First steep twenty seconds, and subsequent steeps of fifteen seconds. One of the reasons I love preparing tea this way is that the aroma present in the wet leaf of a gaiwan is so much more concentrated and wonderful, and the aroma is a huge part of the experience of tea in my opinion. When a lot of leaf is steeped in a small brewing vessel, the aroma becomes a completely immersive experience.

The aromas personally I picked up in the steeped leaf were those of tree bark, caramelized sugar, light notes of dark chocolate and faint remnants of what once was a floral smelling tea before years of aging. Time has really turned this into an incredibly interesting and sensory tea.

The aromas matched the taste, except for the taste was more mellow and refined than the aroma. The flavors blended together completely in harmony. It was smooth and silky, musty yet refreshing. The flavor was heavy and deep, yet light and fresh.

This is one crazy complex aged tea. There is certainly noticeable Dong Ding characteristics, however this one brings much more to the cup. The roasty notes are darker, even a touch of char-like quality – not burnt though. There is a mixture of barley and a pleasant hardwood bark flavor – a woodsy roasted tea, with a malty shu-like (puerh) character. There is no detectable astringency, all that is found is a full bodied brew with a silky smooth sip. It slightly sweet, then it not. Very strange – in a very good way. I can’t quite put my finger on it.

The midnight colored leaves remain their darkness, even after several infusions. I found this tea a little tricky to completely unfurl. It’s a very shy tea, that needs great patience and plenty of time to allow it to fully develop and it’s complete personality to unfold. After around 3 or 4 infusions, finally it decides to really come alive!

I personally would not recommend this tea if you are rushed and in a hurry. You simply would only see it as a good tea, and completely miss its greatness. Very nice aged oolong. Another fine job done by Stacy and the Butiki team!

25 sec 2nd Steep – This brew smelled like straight up roasted coffee beans to me and my twin. My little sister thought it still smelled like hazelnut, and my dad thought it smelled “nutty” in general. Taste wise we all picked up the green bean taste again, though it was a bit morphed this time around in that it also resembled snap peas. The roasty flavor was still present, and there was a nutty flavor this time around, too. The creaminess I got in the first steep was very subtle in this one, but the brew itself was still very smooth.

35 sec 3rd Steep – This one tasted more like straight up snap pea. The roasty/nutty flavor is still present, but not as strong. This one also sees a reemergence of the thick cream taste/mouthfeel, and has some nice buttery notes at the end of the sip. Yum! This one is my favorite steep so far.

50 sec 4th Steep – This one has a nice, strong cream/butter scent mixed in with the vegetal and roasted aspects. Cool. This translates in the taste as well – very creamy/buttery taste with roasted green bean notes. Very smooth and velvety. There is also a nutty and slightly coffee-like taste at the end of the sip. Yummy.

1 min 5th Steep – Butter and green beans in both taste and smell. What all four of us got was the taste of buttered roasted green beans… seriously. I didn’t even know a tea could naturally taste so much like food. Everyone enjoyed this smooth, creamy steep, but I still think the 3rd steep was my favorite.

We stopped there, but I suspect I could’ve gotten a few more steeps from this one. It was sure an interesting tea. I’m glad I have more to mess around with and enjoy. I can’t wait to compare this one to the 1991 Aged Oolong from Butiki.

This oolong is right up my alley and pretty unlike any other I’ve had so far. You could easily mistake it for a black tea; the leaves are pitch black coils and it brews up very dark (darker than many blacks!) with an aroma so roasty it reminds one of coffee. It has this impressive quality of reminding one of something burning, particularly during steeping, but then not having the bitterness associated with that (in comparison, I’d say Butiki Gui Fei Oolong has both and is then balanced by sweetness; here there simply isn’t that harsh flavor at all). The flavor is fantastic and unique, with the toasted cereal quality of genmaicha but the thickness and woodiness of some of my favorite types of black tea. Behind that immediately satisfying wall of toasty cereal flavor there’s a lot of forest qualities, a sort of mossy bark aroma (I’d say there’s almost a fresh mushroom quality to it too, which might sound bad but is actually tantalizing). All in all, because of the toasted cereal and forest elements it reminds me of nutty wild rice without actually tasting just like it, if that makes sense. And somehow with all of this going on the body maintains an oh-so-smooth feel that’s wonderful. I love it! Subsequent steeps bring out a chocolate aspect, as if the tea wasn’t already great.

You get to thinking you’re learning the ropes with tea and start to feel a little burned out, or you know, like there’s nothing new under the sun that will surprise you quite like everything did in the beginning. At least I can start to feel that way, a little blah. Then I encounter a tea like this and am woken up again. I love that.

Would definitely order this again; it’s absolutely one of the best oolongs I’ve tried. I was planning on sipping down some dragon wells today but now I just want to drink this all night.

I was a little surprised by the dry leaf aroma of this one … it’s earthy, similar to a Pu-erh, rather than the usual “floral” or vegetative or even “fruit-like” quality that I have come to expect from an Oolong … then again, this IS an aged Oolong.

I enjoyed it. It does have an earthy quality to it, but, I like that even though it is earthy, I wasn’t put off by the earthy tones. It’s really quite lovely. It has an almost “coffee-like” taste … rich but without the bitterness I would usually associate with coffee … this is sweet … almost like molasses.

A very good cuppa – and the leaves stand up for many … I’m talking MANY infusions. I got eight infusions … and it probably could have gone for at least a couple more.

Another Butiki tea for the day. I wanted something out of the box so I grabbed this to try. It’s so dark and tightly curled, and after reading the other reviews here, I knew I’d probly be drinking this awhile. So I actually had started this a few hours ago and just got around now to putting the log in.
The dry leaves had a roasty and faintly fishy sort of smell, but I didn’t let that deter me.

1st Steeping – 4min/182* – The leaves are still tightly curled but I’m not really surprised by that. The brew itself has a heavy roasted/burnt coffee smell which nearly makes me not want to drink it. I dislike the smell of coffee intensely, but I’ve made it so I might as well try it. Definitely surprised by the taste which is woody and rich taste. There’s a very faint burnt coffee taste, but not as heavy/strong as it smells (also might be a taste association carryover from the smell). Slight grassy notes that I find if I think about it for a moment.
For as strong as the brew smells, it’s overall a very delicate, light sort of taste.

2nd Steeping – 5min/182* – Same sort of scent to the brew but lighter. Definitely has a greener sort of taste to it. Still roasty/burn-y tasting, but I’m also getting a vaguely fishy sort of taste to it now. Bleh. I didn’t even want to finish the cup.

The leaves are still pretty tightly curled and I bet I could get another couple steeps out of them. But honestly I just want a different tea. This one was good to try but it’s definitely not my thing. At least not past the first steeping. Unfortunate but it’s the swap bin for this one.

Extra note – I tossed the leaves into a jar with some water and stuck it in the fridge to cold brew for the night. So I’ll be interesting to see what comes of it.

Wow, this tea was a very interesting experience for me. I never had an oolong like this. I’m going to have to experiment with more different kinds of oolong in order to figure out what’s what.

The dry leaf smelled like chocolate to me, and the tea tasted like coffee. I mean, really like coffee! At least to me. Sometimes I wonder if I have a VERY unsophisticated palate because I am in awe of other people’s tasting notes. Honestly, I was so overwhelmed by the coffee taste that I didn’t really notice anything else about it!

I’m glad I have more of this so I can keep trying it to see if it grows on me. I wonder if it’s the aging or the roasting or what that makes it taste so coffee-ish. Like I said, when I get more experience with oolongs, I guess I’ll know!

No rating because I really don’t know what to think!

Preparation

I had been searching for a good aged Oolong and I’m glad I found this excellent tea. Like a great roasted fruit compote, this tea has a great depth of peach and plum flavors. The roasting burnishes the sweetness with a nice bit of autmunal smoke, perfect for this crisp fall day. By the way, Stacy is a pleasure to do business with and added some great samples to my order, including a rarefied Keemun that wasn’t even on the web site yet. I’m giving the other teas I ordered from her a few tries before reviewing them, but they are all quality teas.

after reading that TheTeaFairy had this tonight I decided to have it as well…I chose to make it in my little Purion pot tonight…it came out rather nicely,I like the way the pot softens the edge on highly roasted teas…high marks again for Stacy,this tea will be on my re-order list(hopefully there’s some left by then)…100ml Purion 8g tea…